The New Anti-Apartheid
Movement:The Campaign to Divest from
Israelby Will YoumansDissident Voice
October 4, 2002

What do you get if you take
the Palestinian uprising, add the socially responsible investment principles of
globalization's critics, and mix in the memory of the last major successful
social struggle - the movement to end Apartheid in Israel?

The end result is the most dynamic organizational framework
activists working for Palestinian rights have seen in this country.

The new divestment campaign began nearly two years ago in
Berkeley. Its goal is to end universities' financial links to Israeli
Apartheid. This is much more tangible than prior efforts, which merely sought
to educate the public. Activists could not get past the frustrating apathy of
the majority. It was difficult to tell whether opinion was changing or not
without advanced polling techniques. Divestment lays out a clear goal.

Divestment's underlying logic is compelling as it is simple. South
Africa's Apartheid government operated a partite system of administration: one
component of the government privileged whites exclusively and fundamentally
because they were white, while the other subordinated blacks. This was on the
basis of race. In the same way, Israel clearly privileges humans of Jewish
ancestry over those of Palestinian descent.

The movement's logic is bolstered by the historical and
experiential proximity between the black South Africans and the Palestinians.
In 1999, CNN reported that Nelson Mandela told the Palestinian
assembly, "the histories of our two peoples correspond in such painful and
poignant ways that I intensely feel myself at home amongst my compatriots."

South African activists are leading what one group calls the
"International Anti-Apartheid Movement Against Israel." The Palestine
Solidarity Committee launched the "new Anti-Apartheid Movement" at
the World Conference Against Racism on August 31, 2001, in Durban, South
Africa. Their mission states that their "own victorious struggle against
apartheid, provide(s) them a unique solidarity with the Palestinian
people." One of their spokespeople, Na'eem Jeenah, is currently touring
the country.

Now over 50 petitions are calling for divestment at universities
all over the country, according to this week's Time magazine
("A Campus War over Israel " 10/7/02). At Harvard and M.I.T., a
petition garnered over 500 signatures. Around 200 University of California faculty
have signed on to a similar one targeting the more than $6 billion the UC
invests in companies doing business with Israel. The first national conference
devoted to divestment was at Berkeley this past February. It attracted over 450
activists.

One way to measure the potential success of the campaign is to
look at the response of Pro-Israeli advocates and their stooges.

This past summer while most students traveled, worked, or studied,
Israel's lobby and friends worked behind the scenes to counter divestment
activities. When UCLA's student newspaper editorial board called for divestment
in July, US Congressman Henry Waxman objected in a letter to the editor
published in the following edition.

A month later, 71 State of California Legislators introduced a
bill against divestment into the California legislature. It called on the
University of California to "reject calls to divest its pension funds that
are invested in companies with ties to Israel."

California Governor Gray Davis did not miss his chance to cash in.
He claimed that the Students for Justice in Palestine's takeover of a campus
building was an anti-Semitic hate crime. A month later he rejected divestment
explicitly, stating, "as long as I am governor of this state, we will
continue to stand side by side with our friends in Israel, both in business and
friendship." Especially in business. Israel is California's 22nd largest
trading partner. Israelis invest over $162 million in California and Israeli
companies have over 200 offices there, mostly in Silicon Valley.

Last June, the Anti-Defamation League put out a press release
condemning divestment. Jonathon Bernstein, the ADL's Northern California
director claimed it rested on "the propagation of a false and odious
comparison to Apartheid-era South Africa." This re-affirmed my suspicion
that they are not really against all defamation. The press release as well as
the ADL's website fail to demonstrate how the analogy is "false and odious."
We are just supposed to take their word for it, despite their history of spying
on anti-Apartheid activists (see Counterpunch's "The ADL Snoops").

Recently, Harvard University's Larry Summers claimed that
advocates of divestment are "anti-Semitic in their effect if not their
intent." This hypocrite chased Cornel West away from Harvard because he
was mixing politics and work Here he is taking a political position in his
capacity as an administrator. As a side-note, he must have sharpened his talent
for hypocrisy as a member Clinton's cabinet and as the Chief Economist for the
World Bank before that - two positions you get by moving in motion with the
dominant political currents.

Currently, pro-Israeli activists are scurrying to delay, counter,
and infiltrate the upcoming divestment conference at the University of
Michigan, to be held October 12th-14th.

The Jerusalem Post depicted it as a Zionism as Racism conference
in an September 30th article. Pro-Israeli activists at U-M took a note from
Campus-Watch and submitted a dossier in an effort to ban the conference. It
alleged that the conference was anti-Semitic. One of its pieces of evidence was
that in a picture on the sponsoring organization's website, an Israeli soldier
has his arm raised in the "heil Hilter" position. It charged that
SAFE used this to imply a comparison between Nazism and Zionism. This absurd
claim characterized the tone of and shaky evidence in the rest of the dossier.
The rest of it used cut-and-pasted attacks on some of the speakers.

Last week, an e-mail spoof was sent claiming to be from an
organizer of the conference, Fadi Kiblawi. The e-mail's from-address was his,
but he did not write it. It went to every faculty member, and claimed to be a
pitch for the conference. Of course, it featured anti-Jewish slurs in order to
make the conference appear anti-Jewish. The organizer whose e-mail was spoofed
realized this happened when he started receiving nasty responses.

The University's information and technological services were able
to demonstrate that it was sent from a different account.

Kiblawi wrote a letter requesting that the President of the
university clear his name since she has access to the entire university
community. Instead she wrote a wishy-washy diatribe against divestment and the
conference, in which she asserted, "I do not support this
divestment." She added, "we do not believe political interests should
govern our investment decisions."

She counter-productively addressed the spoof e-mail towards the
end, of the letter:

"We experienced a
disturbing incident when, in violation of University e-mail policy, a message
containing inflammatory language was distributed to many U-M faculty members. The
authorship and other related circumstances are under investigation we also have
a responsibility to vehemently dispute speech that is incompatible with our
principles and beliefs. The e-mail contained language that was deeply offensive
and hurtful to me and to many others in our community, and I condemn it ... I
ask for your collective support in maintaining civil and respectful campus
dialogue on important issues."

This was a favor to the hackers. Instead of condemning those who
spoofed the activist's e-mail, she used the occasion to state her political
position and let remain the mistaken belief that he wrote it. The campus
newspaper, the Michigan Daily, corrected the record several days
later with an article ("SAFE spokesperson speaks out on effect of Coleman
e-mail" 10/1/02). U-M student Idris Elbakri was quoted as saying, "it
was a mistake to link the hacker's e-mail to our movement. She did not in any
way try to explain to the community that the e-mail was the act of
hackers."

Less positive observers would attribute the President's letter to
malfeasance. I am not sure whether the President's letter was the result of an
agenda or just incompetence. It is often easy to confuse the two.

Israel's supporters are without a doubt working behind the scenes
to quell talk of divestment. A Public records request by lawyers representing
"the Wheeler 79," the students and community members, who were
arrested last April for a sit-in at Berkeley's Wheeler Hall, revealed some
interesting documents. Nearly 16 letters were from donors or potential donors
withholding contributions to the University.

Anyone challenging billions of dollars a year, be it aid or
investment, will be against some powerful forces. For example, the biggest
exporter in Israel is Intel, which the University of California has $190
million invested in. One can imagine the pressure that will bear on activists
who want to disrupt this precious relationship.

Despite these odds, the plight of the Palestinians has become too obvious
and even more intolerable for western activists. The Palestinians are relegated
to negotiating for the West Bank and Gaza, or 22% of their historic homeland.
American Presidents wear the hat of the honest broker, while American policies
and positions categorically advantage the more powerful party. Israel's
military occupation rules too many lives unfairly and ruthlessly. The physical,
mental, emotional, and psychological suffocation the Palestinians experience
has grown with Israel's military budget. The billions of dollars this country
feeds into that deplorable system through trade violates the basic ideas of
socially responsible investment. That over half of US Aid goes to Israel while
people throughout the world perish from starvation is cause enough for this
movement. Its growth is inevitable.

As the divestment campaign spreads, there will be more e-mail
spoofs, more charges of anti-Semitism against Israel's critics, more blunders
and trickery by university Presidents and Regents, and more financial
complicity in the murderous policies that treat the Palestinians as sub-human
problems worthy of no homeland. University decision-makers can save all the
work, time, and energy by divesting now. Of course, that will not happen so
long as powerful political forces oppose it.

University Administrators will find themselves being between a
rock and a hard place. Surely, these hapless administrators will formulaically
bungle their way forward, on the wrong side of history as they did with South
Africa. In fact, we are beginning to hear recycled jingles about separating
politics and investment, and the harmful effects it would have on the
portfolio, and so on - just as they as the excuses they used to oppose
divestment from South Africa. Is it their fate to always be a stumbling block
to progress? In the end, that is irrelevant. It is in our hands now.